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West Tisbury Tract Sells for $15 Million

A 50-acre property in the Priester’s Pond area of West Tisbury has changed hands for $15 million.

The buyer is Claudia Miller, whose mainland place of residence and prior connection to the Vineyard, if any, are unknown. The land includes two houses, one that was built in the Berkshires in 1795 and brought to the Vineyard in 1987.

The property, which has frontage on both Priester’s and Crosby ponds, includes one of the oldest farms on the Vineyard. The other house on the tract, the Luce Athearn House, is even older, dating to 1714.

Property records show Stillpoint Meadow LLC, a limited liability company based in Key West, Fla., bought the property last month from George Szakacs of Passaic, N.J., trustee of two realty trusts. The two deeds in the transaction were recorded Jan. 8.

Ms. Miller was identified as the pending owner of the property in a letter sent to the West Tisbury planning board by Vineyard Haven attorney Geoghan Coogan.

The letter, which was reviewed by the board at its Jan. 7 meeting, asked that the name of the access road into the property be changed from Princes Meadow Road to Stillpoint Meadows Road. The board approved the name change pending notification that the deal had been completed.

The property includes what was known as The Morgan Hall Homestead, built by the carpenter of that name in 1795 in the Berkshires village of Worthington. By the 1980s, the house, which overlooked 140 acres of fields, sat abandoned.

In 1987, antique house restorer Benjamin Clark disassembled the house, shipped it by boat to the Vineyard and reassembled it on land that he owned near Priester’s Pond. Three years later, Mr. Szakacs and his wife, Beverly, bought the house and its property for $780,000. In 1992, they bought additional land in the area for close to $1 million.

Last month, Stillpoint Meadow paid $4 million to Mr. Szakacs, trustee of GWC Realty Trust, for the property containing the Morgan Hall House and additional undeveloped land.

Stillpoint Meadow also paid $11 million last month to Mr. Szakacs, trustee of Priester’s Pond Realty Trust, for property which includes the Luce Athearn House and three acres of land.

Elaine Miller of Sandpiper Realty was the broker involved in the transaction, according to Sandpiper owner Sharon Purdy.

In 2000, Sandpiper listed the property and houses for $12.5 million. Mrs. Purdy said that although the listing was withdrawn from the market that year, Elaine Miller maintained a close relationship with the property owners.